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INURA NMM Book / proposals for part 3. October 2 2012
October 2, 2012 ' ' INURA NMM Book / Proposals for Part III Abstracts received until the Vienna Workshop (October 4-7, 2012) ' ' 'A) Revised and NEW Abstracts' ' ' 1. Spaces of corruption ad abuse. The dialectic between legality / illegality, formality / informality in territorial development Authors: Marvi Maggio (Firenze), Silvia Macchi (Roma and Dar), Beatriz Perralta (Mexico City), Costanza La Mantia (Cairo e Kigali), Christy Petropoulou (Athens). Proposal for part III of NMM book, referred categories “spaces of corruption and abuse” and “informal urbanization” (with interrelation with the categories displacement, eviction and environmental degradation). Corruption and abuse can be found easily in many urban developments, especially in some spacetime contexts (see data on transparency international). But a core issue is the definition of what is meant with these categories. If we relate them to the legal system and we look at what go against it, we miss the ability of the ruling elites (or classes) to change laws as they pleased. We can find similar events that in a country are legal and in another are not: think of the pressure of the lobbies, or the financing of political party by elites, and enterprises. Actually there is an obvious contradiction between what can be label “legal” in the status quo and what can be label “fair” in the direction of equitable possible urban worlds. This means that we have to study the definition and the actual use of these categories in different time- space perspectives. We will draw information for a comparison from the results of the research NMM on these categories in theory and in practice (see the definition in the list of categories august 2012 copied below). We can say that we are living an extreme situation that show an increasing brutality by the ruling classes: many theorists (Gallino 2011, 2012, Revelli 2010, Harvey 2012) have shown in their essays and books that the neoliberal forces are winning and are fighting a class war upon us (the exploited, dispossessed, powerless) while there is not an effective fight back: in so doing the border of what the ruling classes can do move in the direction of their class and elite group interests (as we already stress, they have the power to design laws, regulation, governance systems). In other words the ruling classes very often broke the laws in force, especially when they have emerged from a mediation between different interests and were not only the expression of their own interests. Some of these corruption and abuse practices are there from a long time (the roman empire had good examples) and other will be newer. In particular we have to look at “Predatory urban practices” (Harvey, Rebel cities, 2012:53) that “constitute, at least in the advanced capitalist economies, a vast terrain of accumulation by dispossession, through which money is sucked up into the circulation of fictitious capital to underpin the vats fortunes made from within the financial system”. For examples “many of the foreclosure (over a million during 2010) turn out to have been illegal if not fraudulent…” (Harvey, 2012: 54). The role of the state is pivotal. The formal and informal have to do with what is competence of the state and what not. Foucault sustains “it is possible to suppose that if the state is what it is today, this is so precisely thanks to this governmentality, which is at once internal and external to the state, since it is the tactics of government which make possible the continual definition and redefinition of what is within the competence of the state and what is not, the public versus the private, and so on; thus the state can only be understood in its survival and its limits on the basis of the general tactics of governmentality” (lecture given at the College de France in February 1978, italian version transcribed and edited by Pasquale Pasquino, published in Aut Aut 167-8 September, December 1978). Our aim is to use the data collected for the categories “spaces of corruption and abuse”, and informal urbanization to draw a picture of what seems to be nowadays a crucial power systems set upon urban developments and more broadly, upon urbanization processes. Without forgetting the relations with displacements, evictions and environmental degradation. But who and which processes draw the border between legal and illegal, between formality and informality? Which is the difference between elite illegality and informality and the illegality and informality of all the others? And how the line between them changes through time and spaces as the social forces fight for their interests and their vision of the future? Nous montrerons que la confusion de la terminologie reflète une tendance à considérer de la meme façon (type 15 informal urbanisation) toutes les formes d’urbanisation, différentes de celles connues dans les pays occidentaux. A l’interieur de cette categorie il existent des types des quartiers d’autoconstruction populaire, des occupations des terres par des mouvements sociaux qui defend leur droit à la ville mais aussi des espaces de corruption et abuse. Ces deux processus ne devraient pas se considérer ensemble, car les premiers sont des processus qui résistent à NMM et les secondes font partie de NMM (Petropoulou, 2011, Leontidou 2006). Les processus spatiaux actuels reflet les effets de corruption et abuse par divers groups de pouvoir qui appliquent l’ « accumulation by dispossession » ligne directrice de néolibéralisme (Harvey, 2012) We show that the confusion in terminology reflects a tendency to regard the same way (informal urbanization type 15) all forms of urbanization, different from those known in the Western world. In the inside of this category there are types of neighborhoods on self popular occupations of land by social movements that defend their right to the city but also areas of corruption and abuse. These two processes should not be considered together, as the first processes that are resistant to NMM and the second is part of NMM (Petropoulou, 2011, Leontidou 2006). Spatial processes reflect current effects of special corruption and abuse by various groups of power that apply the "accumulation by dispossession" guideline of neoliberalism (Harvey, 2012) ' ' Bibliography Crainz, G., Autobiografia di una repubblica, Roma, Donzelli, 2009. Gallino, L., Finanzcapitalismo. La civiltà del denaro in crisi, Torino, Einaudi, 2011. Gallino, L., Borgna, P., La lotta di classe dopo la lotta di classe, bari, Laterza, 2012. Harvey, D., Rebel cities, London, Brooklyn, Verso, 2012. Parlato, V., Il blocco edilizio, Il Manifesto, n.3-4, 1970: http://eddyburg.it/article/articleview/3277/0/45/ Revelli, M., Poveri noi, ''Torino, Einaudi, 2010. Roy, A., The 21st-Century Metropolis: New Geographies of Theory, ''Regional Studies, vol. 43.6, pp. 819-830, July 2009. Salzano, E., Vent’anni e più di urbanistica contrattata, Relazione al convegno di Italia Nostra La città venduta, Roma, 6 aprile 2011: http://www.eddyburg.it/article/articleview/16826/0/15/ Saviano, R., Gomorra, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2006. Web site: Transparency International, The global coalition against corruption, Corruption perception index: http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/ Leontidou L., 1990/2006, The Mediterranean city in transition, New York, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press Human Geography Petropoulou C., 2011, Développement urbain et écopaysages urbains. Une étude sur les quartiers de Mexico et d’Athènes. L’Harmattan. ' ' The categories of reference: ' ' Spaces of corruption and abuse '(new) (not necessarily mappable but can be studied and addressed in the texts: introduction, conclusion and case studies in the portrait of the city): Quite similar to what was described as Deals in the case study guidelines. Projects, plans or public works heavily affected by corruption. Strategic plans designed by the ruling groups outside and beyond urban planning legislation. Speculative legal (or almost illegal) buildings and illegal elite villas. Indicators: 1. judicial inquiries on development plans and projects because of bribery and corruption; judicial inquiries on cooked bids or competitions for a public contracts to build public works; newspapers inquiry and campaign about corruption in land issues; 2. protests by community groups and people's committees against specific plans or projects because they insist that there was an abuse against their rights (could be an alleged illegality or something that is perceived as unjust and unfair even if it is not against the law and the legal order), very often in these cases the people's groups produce studies about the contrast between the contested specific plan or urban project and the urban - metropolitan plan or planning law in force. ' ''' '''Informal urbanization '(15) '''urbanization grown outside the formal regulated masterplanning (e.g. slum, shanty-town or unregulated private urbanisations). Although a variety of different processes of informal urbanization exist in different historical and geographical contexts, it is often typified by illegal occupation of land, setting up of makeshift constructions and lack of basic public utilities like water supply, drains, electricity etc. Informal urbanization usually takes place where large sections of the people are excluded from the mainstream economy and find neither work nor shelter, but it is also practiced by the elites operating in ‘special tolerated regimes’. Informal urban processes lie on the borderline between legal, illegal; legitimate, illegitimate; authorized, unauthorized. This border is arbitrary and ever-shifting and is a site of power relations, state power and sometimes violence. Indicative indicators: 1. Data: about being outside the building regulations, urban plans or planning laws (lack of planning permission,); 2. observations on the ground: bad building conditions like risk of flooding, pollution, landslide, proximity to hazardous site, lack of public infrastructure, services, facilities, self-building, variety). ' ' ' 2. '''Geographies of the Crisis Authors: Athens (Dimitra Siatitsa), Florence (Camilla Perrone), Poznan/Warsaw (Joanna Erbel/Kacper Poblocki), and Berlin (Britta Grell, Sabine Horlitz, Manuel Lutz, Andrej Holm) The global political and economic crisis which started in 2007 has affected nation states and respective cities in different ways: some cities suffered from massive unemployment and austerity measures with cuts in social services, where in other cities not much changed, or some cities may even have benefited. For instance, Berlin has not seen any massive cut backs in public services. It can neither be argued that any major private or public investment has been delayed or stalled due to the crisis. Rather, we argue, Berlin has experienced major austerity measures in previous years already. And to the contrary, in Germany Neo-Keynesian infrastructural stimulus packages were deployed which resulted in renovation of schools and the like. Acknowledging the national and local variegations of what we labelled “geographies of the crisis” in the New Metropolitan Mainstream Project we propose to focus on one vital field of the urban: Housing and Real Estate Development. Having said that, the proposal is to map the effects the economic and political crisis had on local housing and real estate markets. It is often difficult to separate which development has been induced solely by the crisis thus we suggest examining changes in housing and real estate development between 2007 and 2012 to identify the ways in which the global crisis intensified or altered existing trends and patterns. This includes (but is not exhausted by) the following dimensions: *How did the patterns of property ownership change and who are the new property owners (includes role of international investment, privatization of public real estate, de- or increase of the share of home ownership vs. rental units, ..)? *Change in real estate prices *How do the conditions of tenancy and tenant rights change? *Is there a suburbanization of the poor? Of course these developments need to be contextualised within their context be it national laws, historical patterns of homeownership or tenancy, and the hitherto propagated and realized New Metropolitan Mainstream. Thus, the comparison will draw in particular on urban developments that have been mapped under the categories of “areas of speculative (re)investment”, “areas of privatization”, the subsequent “processes of displacement”, and “spaces of resistance and contestation” which address directly changes in housing and real estate development such as tenant movements. On the basis of these findings we aim to discuss how the crisis changed the role of housing and real estate in the respective cities? How is housing perceived and discussed, are there new discourses on the new investors shaping the city? Ultimately, this will offer an insight into how the crisis impacted the ongoing discussion of who may live where in the city and how is this city transformed? We are open to a mix of approaches and formats to write this collaborative text. Given the fact that European cities exhibit stark differences but share some common institutional and political frame of the EU we have so far focussed on European cities. But the call is still open for other cities to join. London and Zurich have 'already been contacted. ' ' '----------------------------''' '''3. 'Reform (and dismantlement) of social housing in a time of neoliberalism and austerity policies' ' ' Authors: INURA Amsterdam ' ' We do not have a proper abstract but just a short note from inura amsterdam to signal that we would like to contribute to a chapter on the reform (and dismantlement) of social housing in a time of neoliberalism and austerity policies. Ideally it should be a co-authored with cities with a strong tradition in social housing (or public housing) in Germany or the UK but we have no concrete plan for that either. It should be about different trajectories of social housingthe way social housing has become delegitimized through neoliberal discourses and practices in different ways, how it has been privatized, how gentrification has reduced the share of affordable housing in the city, including social housing and how this impact the urban fabric and specific gorups in the city. We believe Amsterdam had a quite specific trajectory because of the specific institutional setup of social housing in the netherlands, the role of pension funds and the specific state led gentrification policies (originally package as social mixing policy). that trajectory could be contrasted to German or British ones. At the same time it would be useful to address changes in different directions, i.e. attempts to create social housing in cities where it did not succeed before (and where dutch expertise is still welcome to try to do that!). The chapter would relate to the map layers about the state led gentrification of selected neighborhoods, achieved through the privatization of housing associations into housing corporations, the sale of (the most attractive) social housing to home owners, and the national policy to highen rents everywhere in amsterdam and other selected cities to re-establish locational diffferences and allow "market prices". in other word: in the case of amsterdam what we see is the exclusion of lower income groups from an ever expanding inner city ( should we talk of revanchism after decades of housing policies asserting that everyone could live in the inner city? ) Apologies again for not having a proper abstract and proper partners yet. '-----------------------------' ' ' ' ' '4. (Processes) of 'Informalization/Informality ' ' Authors: Rome group There are multiple forms of informality in Rome. We are interested in looking at these different typologies of self organized urbanism, self construction and alternative city building. Informal processes have been usually considered as either negative or dangerous and uncontrollable. In contrast to these theoretical perspectives, we consider informal processes and the forms of self-organization they carry within, as a viable opportunity for the re-appropriation of city and places. In some cases, social and political movements for citizenship rights (like those involved in the fight for housing rights) have developed enough strength to become key factors in urban transformations, suggesting or pushing institutions to accept various models of participatory management of the territory. The influence of these movements and the effects of their action have left their marks on the development of local identity, on the production of urban culture, on the empowerment of local communities. On the other hand, in some cases, ambiguities have to be underlined in the relationship with the administration, in the process management and in the participatory processes. Our aim is to analyse and evaluate these social practices, to compare them, to discuss related urban policies, even considering other cities experience. Contact: 'Antonella Perini: mail@antonellaperin.it Authors: Iacopo Zetti & Anna Lisa (Florence) Informality in the use of urban spaces can be seen as something strictly connected with the presumed need of a growing urban control and, at the same time, as something that contradicts the idea of public urban space as a commodity. In this sense informality is not just the result of survival strategies in the towns of poor countries, but something that is strictly connected with the historical nature of any urban center (if we want also something that helps local strategies to overcome the actual crisis). In the text about Florence in Libby and Kate book we tried to describe how this town is conceived by a certain part of economical actors and by the administration as a brand to be used to promote some products, the globalized industry of mass cultural tourism, and the political career of the local administrators. This introduce a continuous dispute for the use of public space, that goes ahead not in seminars or debates, but in the daily movements and strategies to regain the right to be a subject in your urban daily life Vs the action for the eviction of this kind of city users (they are not city buyers) from our brand city center. In a more general view, informality is something that spreads also in the suburbs, not only as informal settlements of migrants, refugees, traveling people, homeless and other poor people, but also to answer to some emerging needs that don't find answer in the rigid, over-planned and over-controlled public space of the contemporaneity. New types of spaces appear everywhere by initiative of the people who live in the neighborhood or use the places as “communities of practices” and not only as “communities of inhabitants”. This new spaces of appropriation and of “significance by use” are especially used for urban agriculture and gardening, convivial and ludic practices, informal commerce linked to informal ecological economies that goes far beyond the abused green economy concept in the rethinking of western model of development (local farmers markets, flea markets or second hand, redesigned/recycled products, barter, art and craft, etc.). By the side of housing this phenomena is well represented by the growing request of places for self-building aimed to experiment new forms of urban communities. The idea is to map and survey this kind of emerging spaces (allotments gardens, jardins partagees, community gardens, temporary occupied public spaces, new forms of public art, selfbuilt places etc...) to understand if this is only a new cultural fad, that will be quickly absorbed by the market, or the individual and absolutely marginal reaction to the lack or a shrinking of welfare and of rights (the result of a survival strategy is not directly a critic of the status quo), or the awareness of a possible new model of development, based on an economy of conviviality, on the recognized value of common goods, on new forms of organization between private and public for managing of the resources etc... This can be a topic to be inserted in the comparison about process of informalization and informality, but also in relation with the geographies of the crisis and with alternatives/resistance practices? ' ' '''Contact: '[mailto:iacopo@controgeografie.net '''iacopo@controgeografie.net]' ' Other people/groups who expressed interest: Christy Petropoulos (Athens) ------------------------------- ' ' ' ' '5. Suburbanizing the Metropolitan Mainstream' ' ' Authors: Roger Keil (Toronto) ' ' The world of the 12st century is an increasingly suburban environment. While we now talk of an ‘urban planet’, what we are really seeing is a surge of ‘global suburbanisms’ (for an elaboration of these ideas see www.yorku.ca/suburbs and http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/06/atlas-suburbanisms/2173/). Suburbanization and suburbanisms are not distinct from urban processes anymore but have to be seen as a defining part of the (post)metropolitan process overall. This chapter will explore how the metropolitan mainstream remakes the suburbs and how the urban periphery, in turn, has become a central element in the metropolitan mainstream in cities around the world. I am seeking to collaborate with INURIANS who have case studies to share and compare but am also interested in conceptual and theoretical debates. Contact: '''[mailto:rkeil@YORKU.CA '''rkeil@YORKU.CA] Other people/groups who expressed interest: Camilla Perrone (Florence), Michael Lukas (UFZ, Leipzig), Katharina Sucker (Istanbul) -------------------------- '6. Influence of the European Union' ' ' Authors: Amsterdam group As Amsterdam group we are interested in a comparison about the influence of the European Union on national politics and consequences on cities. Does European politics creates / supports Metropolitan Mainstream and if yes how? Driven by neoliberal thinking the rules of the European Union have enormous impact on the social housing system of the Netherlands. We would like to investigate if there are comparable consequences in other European countries. Not only on housing, but also other fields, like transport, labor, etc. We don`t yet know if other European cities are interested. We throw this into the group and hoop some of you will join us. We would take the coordinating / editing role of this comparison. (b) Social housing / temporary use Beside this we would join groups about comparison of social housing or temporary use (also as result of the crisis). © Housing market standstill and crisis We also discussed the fact that in the Netherlands, especially in Amsterdam and the conurbation that forms the Western part of the country ('Randstad') the housing market (for sale, for rent, and building) has come to a near-complete standstill due to 'the crisis' and even more, because of total uncertainty about the economic/financial, and the regulatory and fiscal future. We were (vaguely) curious whether this is also the case in other cities. Contact: '''[mailto:wullers@GMX.DE '''wullers@GMX.DE] ------------------------ '''7. '(New)Metropolitan Mainstream under the Crisis (urban regeneration vs. temporary urbanism) ' ' Author: Camilla Perrone and Giancarlo Paba (Florence) ' ' What has been happening to cities all over the world in the past three/four years (may be even earlier) could be described as a shift from a metropolitan mainstream meant as a “decoded” trend, although complex, to a changing trend exposed to opposing forces placed in tension by the crisis and its spatial and economic effects (not enough evolved to be understood). Among the many phenomena going on under such slippery trend, one seems to be more strictly related to the spatial effect stemming from the crisis’ pressure: the diffusion and tendency to persist of the temporary use (between the initiation and the final execution of urban transformation projects) of sites and building that for some reasons have been withheld by the market as well as by the governments. Although still in an experimental stage, such tactical temporary initiatives play a strategic role in long term planning and design. They mostly reflect the current trend towards a more open and inclusive urban planning in coping with the urban injustice exploded under the crisis in the real estate developments and more in general, in the non-transparent urban development. Cities are still coping with the spatial effects of the past urban polices based on the urban regeneration ones, most of the time outlined under the neoliberal umbrella. Sometimes processes that have been started before are still going on, showing the negative impact of the crisis in terms of intensification of privatization and shrinking of the public sector. Some processes have been accelerated, others stopped or failed. Notwithstanding such situation, new urban phenomena are emerging on the ruins of neoliberal cities contributing to redefine the city as a common good. They could be grouped under the category of temporary urbanism and referred to some of the following processes (i.e.): the re-appropriation of the urban spaces, re-using the hardware of the city (ranging from private spaces, brown fields, industrial building, housing etc… to public spaces, urban green areas, agricultural urban areas etc…); the re-cycling of the city (underutilized, abandoned and vacant urban land); guerrilla urbanism etc… Temporary urban practices sometimes invest exactly the same places – perfect sites for regeneration (buildings, open spaces, neighborhoods etc.) – that the neoliberal mainstream would have replaced or have already, through mainstream regeneration projects (failing in some cases, promoting gentrification in others or just feeding inequalities processes). Temporary urbanism could be considered as a sort of soft strategy in the re-making of contemporary cities in the face of the crisis. Most of the time it’s leaded by a new kind of actors (to be defined): people strongly affected and touched by the crisis. 'Contact: '[mailto:camilla.perrone@unifi.it '''camilla.perrone@unifi.it]' / '[mailto:iacopo@controgeografie.net iacopo@controgeografie.net] Other people/groups who expressed interest: Iacopo Zetti & Anna Lisa (Florence); Athens group; Amsterdam group; Michael Edwards (London) ? '------------------------' '8. Spectacular Urbanism in the NMM' ' ' Authors: Aysim Turkmen (Istanbul) & Lorenzo Tripodi (Berlin/Florence) Even though spectacle has been an integral part of political power all through history, in late modern society, especially after 1980’s, it appears as an essential character shaping the powers colonizing urban landscape with a phantasmagoria of images responding to entrepreneurial logics A seductive urbanism, which we call here spectacular, masks the state’s hightened control over and even dismission of public space while opening city space to the interests of private investment. In the background, the Fordist organization of production which constituted the core of the modernist project is substituted by a new paradigm dictated by such models as Facebook, Apple, Warner Bros or Nike corporations, while the distinction among production and consumption is erased and our social life is put at work becoming value productive labour. Debord, with the concept, “integrated spectacle” foresightedly anticipated the mechanism through which global capitalism has managed to combine the spectacle of political and economic power in the commodity phantasmagoria, producing the total commodification of the city and subsuming citizens’ everyday life. We propose for this chapter a comparative analysis of spaces formed or re-formed by spectacular hegemonic discourses and images such as flagship projects, trendy neighborhoods, massive infrastructure projects, heritage sites and the events and festivals that turn cities into entertainment parks. With such analysis, we aim at unmasking the phantasmagorical elements claiming to bring progress and novelty while repeating the ever-same discourses. We would ask questions as: How does the mechanism of urban spectacle creation operate? How is it transferred and reiterated, throughout the urban world? What are the specificities and generalities among the different local contexts? How is urban spectacle perceived and resisted by the citizens? and other questions that will arise in our minds about late urban fairy scenes. Istanbul, Berlin, Florence, Zurich have been so far considered for the comparison, but we wait for further suggestions. Contact: '''[mailto:aysimt@yahoo.com '''aysimt@yahoo.com]' / '[mailto:loreso@OGINOKNAUSS.ORG loreso@OGINOKNAUSS.ORG] Other people/groups who expressed interest: Philipp Klaus (Zurich); Ute Lehrer (Toronto); Christy Petropoulos (Athens); Katerina Polychroniadi ----------------------------- '9. NMM: A critique of mapping' Authors: Cristina Mattiucci (Naples/Paris), Katerina Polychroniadi (Athens/Paris), Libby Porter (Edinburgh/Melbourne), Anke Schwarz (Hamburg/Leipzig), Arie van Wijngaarden (Amsterdam) Draft October 4, 2012 If we understand mapping in the Lefebvrian sense as the production of new spatial representations as well the reproduction of existing images and imaginations, mapping the city clearly has a reciprocate effect upon the urban space. Working around maps as a device, the text we propose aims to re-read the process of the NMM mapping project, in order to reflect on its problems and potentials. After making some critical remarks on mapping as a tool and its shortcomings (what «escapes» the map?), we will explore the «unmappable» from a technical, instrumental and political point of view. This will mainly be based on the experiences from the entire NMM project. Social processes and movements in particular tend to show an unmappable behaviour – some of Cairo’s revolutionary movements and the Hamburg RTC network, for instance, were found to be somehow unapt for geocoding. Mapping also encounters some constraints with respect to issues of time (the ongoing crisis, temporal uses, events) and space. The latter includes spatial overlaps and spatial dispersion, given the example of the process of social housing privatization in the Netherlands, where individual flats are sold off rather than whole housing complexes or social housing entities. The NMM maps will thus become be two-way devices - both as structural part of the NMM project and as object of broader considerations to be developed in this book chapter. The text will be comparative in both diachronical and synchronical terms. Synchronical, because the unmappable will be explored through the pilot cities involved in the inquiry (started in fall 2012). While re-examining the mapping process with the new categories developed since the Zurich meeting, city groups were asked to reflect upon their mapping experiences. Together with past experiences from our own mappings, this serves to explore the unmappable and ways to include these aspects in a different kind of way into the NMM materials. Diachronically, because the mappable and unmappable aspects of the entire NMM mapping process are linked to the genesis and transformation of the categories through time. This refers the history of the NMM process itself and the related mapping debates and decisions. As creating a map is creating an image of the city, the simplification and generalisation that are the very nature of this tool are both benefit and weakness. Contact: '''[mailto:schwarz.anke@GOOGLEMAIL.COM '''schwarz.anke@GMAIL.com] --------------------------------------------- '10. Spaces of poverty in the NMM' ' ' Authors: Laura Colini (Berlin/Florence) & Penny Koutrolikou (Athens) ' ' "Poverty can mean different things in different contexts and is examined though different definitions such as absolute-poverty, relative-poverty, overall-poverty (Gordon 2000) hybrid-poverty (Sen 1983). Poverty has been constructed as urban problem requiring the intervention of planners and social reformers and ever since strategies to reconstruct and develop critical urban areas have been experimented according to different theories and perspectives. Spaces of poverty and their residents have often been vilified as criminal, dirty and/or immoral ‘others’, while at times a ‘cultural’ attribute has also been evoked in order to present socio-spatial injustices and exclusions as a result of cultural traits of particular people and groups. The overall concept of poverty shifted towards different locutions as exclusion, disadvantage, segregation and marginalization tactically used as synonyms for downward dynamics of social, political, environmental and economic disparities affecting parts of cities, blocks of flats or streets. More recently, new discourses are emerging concerning spatial justice, capabilities and rights-based approaches that examine the broad issue poverty (and other inter-related themes) through different analysis and praxis. "Space of Poverty" may be seen as misleading category in our maps especially when it is exclusively presented in terms of spatial or locational disadvantage, since it risks to minimize the discourse around the complex uneven processes of production of disadvantages. For the session “spaces of poverty” we would like to look at how poverty issues have become part of the NMM, and how these have been visually represented/interpreted on the maps. We are looking for cities to share their analysis in order to build a comparative perspective and for contributions in the theoretical debate." Contact: '''[mailto:penny_ek@yahoo.co.uk '''penny_ek@yahoo.co.uk]' / '[mailto:laura.colini@GOOGLEMAIL.COM laura.colini@GOOGLEMAIL.COM] --------------------------------------------- '11. Historical Reconstruction ' ' ' Author: Aysim Turkmen (Istanbul) ' ' Invention of history is inseparable part of modern power dynamics. Making some cities or a part of a city historical has been one of the most important modern tools in shaping the cities (especially in the colonial administrations). Nationalist policies all around the world have attempted to build specific historical and ideoloical identities for the cities, erasing the traces of many conflicting past experiences. After 1980’s, there is an even broader interest in history–making in the cities, which has been part of a marketing strategy of better selling the city. However, some examples of historical constructions have been ideological; rejecting the existing modernist identity of the city (such as Kemalist in Turkish case or soviet model for post-socialist cities) and building an alternative version to the modernist identity with reference to the city’ past (such as Ottomanist styles in Turkish case or Christian or Muslim heritage construction in the post-soviet cities). I would like to call to those who would be interested to look and to compare at the new forms and mechanisms of history-making in different cities. By such comparison, we can address the question: what type of function does historical recontruction serve in the era of international real estate capitalism? and other questions that will come up as we will look at historicist urban discourses and practices. Contact: '''[mailto:aysimt@yahoo.com '''aysimt@yahoo.com] Other people/groups who expressed interest: Milan Prodanovic (Novi Sad) ---------------------------------- '12. Contradictions of "red urban neoliberalism"' ' ' Authors: Vienna group ' ' Starting from our nmm-work on the city of Vienna we are interested to further elaborate discussions on the contradictions of prevailing policies of “>red< urban neoliberalism”. The city of Vienna is widely linked to its history as “Red Vienna” - in its self-perception as well as in its image known to observers from the outside. By this referring to the historical period in the 1920s, but in a wider sense also to a specific type of urban politics during the Fordist period, which has been continuously dominated by socialdemocrats at the local level. In the course of this period a huge stock of social housing (about one quarter of the total housing stock) and quite well functioning public infrastructure has been established. Behind this background the “new metropolitan mainstream” today materialises in specific forms, creating all sorts of tensions as well as difficulties for progressive action and debate. While on the one hand the role of the existing infrastructure and its socially inclusive functions are widely acknowledged, on the other hand the orientation of urban politics has been reshaped in well known neoliberal terms - entailing cutbacks and restructuring of socially inclusive policies, the fostering of interurban competition, flagship projects, privatisation etc. The situation for progressive urban debates in this context is ambivalent. On the one hand the Vienna model is still used as a "positive" point of reference when looking from the outside and debating developments in other places (eg. when debating the German case of large scale privatisation of the social housing stock). In this respect it can be argued, that in Vienna the existence of such infrastructure still does make a material difference, contributing to still lower rates of social fragmentation, and compared to other large European cities still lower costs for housing. On the other hand, the ongoing erosion of the policies of provision and maintenance of such infrastructures still faces very little resistance in the city of Vienna itself - due to various reasons, some of them being the repercussion of the before mentioned self-perception as the socially inclusive “Red Vienna”, accompanied by traditionally rather top-down modes of social-democrat urban social policy! provision. In recent years the crisis exacerbates the situation, involving austerity policies and rising housing costs as Vienna is being rediscovered as "safe" capital investment. However, at the level of local politics the "social question" is still mainly politicised in racist terms by the right wing party. And generally the entry points for resistance and progressive urban policies still seem to be very weak. We are interested to further develop reflections/exchange on the various tensions and contradictions produced by this constellation, and also discuss the rather successful strategies of silencing resistance. At a first sight, we would be curious to exchange ideas with the crisis debate '''proposed by the '''Berlin group, also some reference to the cooperative model discussed during the Zurich conference would be interesting. Various other linkages might be possible. Contact: '''[mailto:bettinakoehler@GMX.NET '''bettinakoehler@GMX.NET] -------------------------------------------- '13. Medellin's “Social Urbanism” - new alternative metropolitan mainstreaming?' ' ' Authors: Medellin group (Soledad Betancur ; Angela Stienen ; Omar Uran) ' ' During recent years, some cities in the so-called Global South have become important global reference points for new alternative metropolitan mainstreaming, such is the case of Colombia’s Medellin. Medellin’s « Social Urbanism » - spectacular transport systems (cable cars, giant escalators), and social buildings with spectacular architecture in low income districts on steep hillsides - has attracted journalists, politicians, architects, and urban planners, from all over the world ; international newspaper praise Medellin’s « Social Urbanism » as inspiring and innovative, worth to be copied elsewhere in the world. Starting from our critical analysis of the Medellin's renaissance since the early 1990s, when NMM was adopted as a strategy, not only by Medellin's economic and political elite, but also by the city's critical intellectuals and urban social movements; yet, the latter started re-signifying, transforming and adapting NMM to the social claims in that violence-torn city. We propose to discuss Medellin’s «Social Urbanism« as part of new alternative metropolitan mainstreaming which has emerged in the so-called Global South. Contact: '''[mailto:Angela.Stienen@PHBERN.CH '''Angela.Stienen@PHBERN.CH] ---------------------------- 'B) List of further Ideas / Interests/ topics ' (no abstracts so far) ' '